Followers

Blog Archive

About Me

I'm a trained Pastry Chef, but haven't worked for a restaurant since 2005. Now I do stuff just for friends and my very lucky coworkers. I'm involved in my church Singles group, and I love playing with my best friend's 3yr old son. I tend to spoil him rotten. I also have 2 cats who are my only babies right now.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

This particular cake was an experiment, of sorts, since I was intent on trying out a new technique, not to mention that I didn't have the time or patience to carve a dumptruck. A FBCT is just what it sounds like, frozen buttercream image that you transfer onto the cake.

It can be a very tedious process. I don't recommend it, unless you have a couple of days to work on it. It basically works like a painting, except that you start with the details and work backwards. Have your picture under a piece of wax paper so it comes off easily after your done.

For this particular picture, we started with the black outlines, wheels, lifting mechanism, and any other black details.

Freeze for at least 30 minutes, but an hour is better.

Next we did the darker yellow detailing on the back of the truck, plus the white details.

Freeze again.

Then we filled in all the yellow on the truck.

Freeze again, and this time at least an hour.

The last step was to cover the entire picture with green buttercream that matched the fondant that the cake was covered in. Make sure to use a generous amount since this fills in any holes between the other parts. Also, be sure to smooth out the top so that it's smooth when it becomes the back of the transfer.

Freeze again, overnight if possible.

When you're ready to put it on the cake, flip it over onto the cake so that the top becomes the back and peel the wax paper off of it. At this point, you will want to trim the edges with some type of border. We chose M&M's for ours, but you can use a shell or bead border too.

Cake details:

The cake is a 9x13x6 chocolate cake with chocolate chip buttercream. It's covered in green MMF. The "dirt" on top is crushed chocolate teddy grahams.

Emily and I had a lot of fun making this cake, and the birthday boy enjoyed it too. He especially loved the M&M's.

I learned a very helpful hint from my Wilton instructor about making these roses. She told my class to use the Wilton premade white icing in the small can. It's the perfect stiff consistency to make flowers. Once I tried it, I never looked back. I could never get my buttercream smooth enough to make flowers. My roses always tore. Now I try to keep some of it around, just in case I need to make flowers for something. It colors really well so it's not a problem to use.

I recommend this stuff to anyone who wants to make handmade buttercream flowers for a cake.

The boss man decided to come tell me last Monday (3/29) that he was leaving early that day to go get married. WHAT!!!!!! Yep, I heard him right. He was leaving early to go get married that afternoon, and he never mentioned it to anyone. Being that I am the secretary in my department, it fell on me to scramble together flowers and a cake for him for the next day. Ordered the flowers that afternoon (with special instructions for no pink flowers), and then started planning the cake. My mind was in overdrive already because I had such a short time to throw something together.

Fortunately, I had some green MMF already made so I decided to start with that and build the rest of the cake from there. He's not a big sweets eater so I made a simple french vanilla cake with chocolate chip buttercream filling. I rolled the MMF on an impression mat to give it some texture. While the cake was baking, I made 8 buttercream roses in 2 different sizes. Fortunately, the roses decided to cooperate with me that day. Anyone who makes buttercream roses knows that there are days when they just don't want to behave. I wrote "Congratulations" across the cake and put the roses around it, and I put a simple bead border around the bottom. Not my best cake ever, but definitely not bad for only 5 hours worth of work.